Naacp Boulder County Press Release Regarding Boulder City Manager Rivera-Vandermyde’s Selection Of Redfearn As Chief Of Police

Editor’s Note: Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

Today, the NAACP Boulder County shares the below press release, which includes a partial transcript provided to show that the City Manager was present to observe Then-Interim Chief of Police Redfearn’s cultural incompetence, but chose to hire him any way.

NAACP Boulder County is shocked and dismayed over Boulder City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde’s decision to promote Stephen Redfearn to Boulder Police Chief. The Boulder County Branch of the NAACP, allied partner organizations and community members continue to strongly object to Redfearn. He was the Nightshift Duty Commander overseeing the officers responsible for Elijah McClain’s death as well as leader of a brutal assault with chemical weapons against violin vigil participants honoring Elijah McClain’s memory. Redfearn has not expressed remorse, contrary to what the City Manager is quoted as saying, in fact, re the violin vigil. Redfearn says, in a recorded Police Oversight Panel interview that he “would do it again”. Boulder’s City Manager has consistently misrepresented Redfearn to the public (as has city councilman Mark Wallach) and minimized Redfearn’s ‘anything but reimagined’ policing methods. He was trained in, and built a career of 22 years with the Aurora Police Department (currently under a consent decree), a department well-known for consistent practices of discriminatory and brutal practices.

Redfearn is demonstrably anti-Black and exhibits an undeniable lack of cultural competency. In fact, NAACP Boulder County members have experienced his extreme anti-Black sentiments directly. Redfearn lauds the Boulder PD’s adding of three police ‘liaisons’ to the LGBTQ community, and one each to the Jewish and Islamic communities. Notably absent are the groups statistically most negatively and disproportionately impacted by policing in our community—Blacks, Native Americans, LatinX and people of color. Redfearn has misled the public about his work, as well as his responsibilities and his actions on and around Elijah McClain’s murder. His career was built in the Aurora Police Department, in which he was groomed and promoted–a department infamous for its brutality, racism, lack of accountability, and deaths. Hiring Redfearn as Chief of Police of Boulder is a dishonor to Elijah’s family, all those who believe in fairness and ethics in policing and invites future incidents to occur right here in Boulder. The Boulder community through the reimagining policing plan called for transparency and accountability. Is a racist pattern and practice of policing from Aurora what Boulder really wants?

NAACP strenuously objects to the sham of a police chief search conducted at city tax payer expense.

The City Manager continues a string of hires and decisions that belie the community to which she should be serving. Her farce of a police chief search, and promotion of a dangerously culturally incompetent police chief, reveal a lack of leadership and responsibility to the community. It is obvious that Stephen Redfearn was placed in Boulder–the hire only makes sense as a behind the scenes deal made at the expense of Blacks, Native Americans and people of color in our community. Was Redfearn given the position from higher ups in exchange for his lukewarm testimony in the Elijah McClain trial? Or is it that our city manager lacks discernment in hiring? Those involved clearly expected the Boulder community to be unaware and uncurious of this placement, thinking Redfearn’s background, position, and actions surrounding Elijah McClain’s death would go unnoticed. In fact, the City’s initial website bio on Redfearn notably failed to make mention of Redfearn’s twenty-two-year Aurora career. One has to wonder how many more Aurora Police Officers has Boulder hired since Elijah McClain’s murder.

In a transcript from a meeting with NAACP Boulder County officers, City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde, Stephen Redfearn, his department handler, and two mediator/facilitators, Redfearn continued to evade accountability for his actions on the night Elijah McClain was murdered. It strains credulity for anyone (but Mark Wallach and Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde) to believe a 22-year veteran of Aurora PD would not know that changing a call log from “suspicious person” to “assault on an officer” after Elijah McClain’s lifeless body was taken away in an ambulance was anything but a cover-up.

In the attached transcript, Redfearn reveals extreme anti-Blackness when he whines and protests the facial expressions of the Black person sitting next to him, accusing them of ‘smirking’, as if this is an outrageous crime. His belief in his right to police even the facial expressions of Black people is precisely what gets them killed by law enforcement. It is extraordinary for any police officer in the year 2024 to be this incompetent, let alone promoted to a position where lives are at stake. Stephen Redfearn does not remotely possess the qualifications stated on the city’s website for the position of police chief, proving the City Manager has wasted tax payers’ time and money in an expensive sham search for a visionary police chief. It is a public disgrace to the city of Boulder.

Wake Up Boulder! Do we really want to be emulating Aurora’s deadly policing tactics?

Boulder is better than this.

Police Chief Redfearn’s Cultural Incompetence On Full Display in Meeting Between NAACP Members and Then-Interim Chief Redfearn, City Manager Rivera-Vandermyde, and Alastair McNiven

July 25, 2024 transcript excerpt:

Annett James: Let me get back to something Darren brought up when you were ending. You talked about a letter that went to our state conference. So you were not there. You were not present, as I understand. You were not, what you were complaining about, you were not actually there.

Stephen Readfearn: Correct. So I can expound if you like. That night at council, I was there. I walked out. The cops were talking, and then the next day a few of them had brought this, just said, hey, I’m not sure what to do about this, but this comment was said when the group was walking by, your name came up. And again, not knowing any of you all within the NAACP, I just said, man, that’s really problematic. That’s offensive.

And so the cops came to me and said, hey, what can we do about this? And I said, I’m happy to write a letter if maybe that will get some traction. But yeah, I just wrote the letter on their behalf, hopefully getting some sort of traction there.

Annett James: Yeah, so past performance is really indicative of how one leads.

You know, you don’t know me. You don’t know the NAACP here. You don’t bother to contact us, but you do bother to send a letter complaining about a conversation that you didn’t hear.

You don’t know the circumstances about it. I’m allowed, we’re allowed, to talk about the police in private conversation. Someone overhears it, so then it’s your responsibility then, without trying to get any clarity.

And how is that leadership?

Stephen Redfearn: For me, that was leadership because my staff, that I have the responsibility of looking after, came to me and said, hey, we’re really upset. What can we do about this?

Annett James: Clearly. Got it.

Stephen Redfearn: For me, that was the response because I didn’t have that relationship.

And to go back to the previous point [pause] this seems futile. You’re not listening to what I’m saying.

Darren O’Connor: No, we’re not agreeing.

Stephen Redfearn: You’re smirking at me.

Annett James: I can smirk. So now you control my facial expressions? You control what I say in private? What is this? I’m listening. I can smirk? Oh, my goodness.

So you tone police and you . . . give me a break? I can’t have a conversation, I can’t make a facial expression? Really? That’s pathetic. I will smirk. I smirk all the time. That is the way I process. If it offends you, too bad. This is ridiculous.

I guess I wanted to get back to the point. You said that you were showing leadership to your staff. But leadership is, for your role, it’s for the community as well.

And so who you protect is very clear. It is very clear throughout. Everything that I’ve read about you, it all aligns perfectly.

You are there to protect police. You are not there to protect community. And certainly not Black community.

And you will take whatever word they tell you without doing the minute amount of investigation. You have no curiosity about what the truth might be. Well, you haven’t demonstrated it.

Stephen Redfearn: My last year in Aurora, I was division chief of operations. I fired 12 people that year. In Boulder, we have had multiple discipline cases since I’ve been here. Three of them have resulted in people leaving. I have no problem holding people accountable. That night, my role, I was the deputy police chief. And as I explained, my direction from my boss was to be very internally focused. Since January, I’ve been more externally focused. Alastair can attest we’ve been going all over the community and meeting with a multitude of entities.

And I have staff now being more internally focused where I’m trying to transition to be more externally focused. And I’m learning. I’m meeting people that I didn’t have the opportunity to meet with before because we all have bosses—mine, at the time, didn’t want me to be externally focused.

Annett James: Yeah, I want to go back to, maybe because I’m highly insulted by Steve’s reference to me smirking. This is the kind of thing that white police do when they shoot Black people, right? You smirked, you didn’t show the proper deference. And these are the things that are born out of a system of racism where you get to decide what’s the appropriate way to even make eye contact.

I mean, just the fact that you would say that is so telling to who you are as a person. Because I would never have said that you have right now, you know, you’re furrowing, you have those right there. I would never have noticed that—I would have taken that as thought or contemplation. But somehow, just the fact that I frowned was insulting enough to you

that it bothered you. I would think that if I did that and I was pulled over by you as a cop, you’d shoot me.

Yeah, because you were so insulted by it. I mean, it’s so weird to me that that would be something that you could point out and to verbalize it. As a Black person interacting with a cop, not only do we have to show our hands, we’ve got to make sure we smile . . . we’re not that person anymore that the history has not caught up with.

And this is the thing that causes harm and one to lose their life. Just that you could point that out is so poignant that you have no understanding about Black people and how to interact with them.

Stephen Redfearn: I respectfully disagree.

Annett James You don’t have to disagree with respect.

Darren O’Connor: When we hear that you guys want to learn, and I don’t mean to put you in the same pot, but, want to learn from those communities because they’ll never know, you just heard it. And you’re basically, I disagree, I think your opinion’s wrong.

Where’s the meeting of the mind? And that’s fine, you disagree. But I’ll leave here thinking there’s no meeting of the minds and there’s no curiosity. And I have to say, when she was saying that, you did a head shake and were like, that’s just not right—and that’s fine. But when she did it, it wasn’t fine. And so you’re disagreeing about your own reaction right now because you did a similar, different but very similar response.

Facilitator: And I think the context is very real and it goes back to that systemic bias piece where there’s different standards of behavior based on who people are and that it’s very subjective. And within a Black community, for somebody to have a behavior that a white

person doesn’t understand could lead to something even more tragic, especially in policing. And I think what Darren is saying is rather than respectfully disagree, is there a question you could ask or is there a wondering about, you know, tell me more about that.

Because it is true that based on people’s behaviors, it’s like, they could lose their life. And so I think that curiosity is a really important part of a leader, is to not disagree but to say, so tell me more or how did you experience, I mean, I think she’s sharing how she experienced you, and then contextualizing it to the conversation we’re having about policing. And so this goes back to that, like how do we hire people? How do we hire an officer regardless of their color

so that they can distinguish between a behavior that someone is doing versus a threat that somebody is? Because a behavior is not necessarily a threat.

And so when we get triggered by those things, then that’s something that is within us. And so it goes back to, I mean, if we could go back to that instead of saying respectfully disagree, is there a question that you could ask Annett about what she shared with you? Because what she shared with you is real for her.

So I think that goes back to that whole idea of how are we training people? Because I think that’s one of the systemic pieces in policing where we have to start thinking about those things because your odd behavior, whatever it is, could end your life or could put you on a

trajectory that you didn’t set out to do when you whatever, got in your car or called the police because you were scared about something.

Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde: Breaking patterns, right, of systems, I think it’s…

Facilitator: Yeah, both are individual and systemic patterns that we have to start to really look at. And if it’s a blind spot, you can just say it’s a blind spot for me. I need to learn more because you’re absolutely right—we all have blind spots. And so to do this work, we’ve got to really dissect these things and start to figure out how do we approach them in a way that this [holding his glasses out] doesn’t look like a threat to somebody when I’m doing this. I’m just really nervous right now—oh, he’s got something in his hand. Oh, wait, it’s just his glasses, right? Because that’s a real experience.

Jude Landsman: It goes, to me, to leadership qualities, like we were just talking about, having officers that already possess some semblance of that. Well, there’s a long way to go, a long way to go. And in terms of trust, there’s no previous behavior that we can go by for your leadership skills.

There just aren’t, you know. Like I said, a clean record from APD doesn’t hold much weight. And the behaviors that we’ve seen have not been indicative of someone in the highest leadership of the police department in Boulder.

We have students. We have more diversity coming. There very well may be future protests.

You know, in my, whatever, seven years in the NAACP and talking to people directly, I haven’t met a Black man in Boulder who has not been stopped by the police. Okay? It may not get on your radar, and something tragic may not have happened. The person may just have been scared to death and gone, oh, okay, I got away with it—you know, I got away from the police without losing my life. But it doesn’t mean those incidents aren’t happening. Really, do a study. Do a demographic study.

Annett James: Look at their own report. Look at the Hillard-Heintz Report. It tells you.

Jude Landsman: Yeah, but I mean, find out how many Black people, particularly Black men in Boulder, who have not been stopped for one reason or another.

I think we need, we have a time of possible change. You know, we’re always, like, why should we have a leader that we have to, like, teach the basics?

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